That’s a bit of a strong statement from someone who runs a proudly ‘team-led’ business!
And no offence is intended to the people overseeing our efforts at the Paris Olympics.
But, no.
Teams are smaller groups, more agile things.
Even an organisation of only 100 people, like Involvement, is a collection of teams. Team GB is a collection of teams. The NHS, with over 1 million employees, can never be a Team – it is a collection of ‘000s of teams.
Which brings me to the point of this post, which is that in organisations larger than a football team, the way your teams work with other teams is as, if not more, important than the way they perform by themselves.
I call this relationship the mortar being more important than the bricks.
Here’s a picture of the Stockport Viaduct, the world’s largest brick construction when it was constructed. It’s not far from our HQ in Manchester and every time I drive under it, I think about how it’s famous for being made from 11 million bricks, but is held together by goodness knows how many buckets of mortar.
Let’s hear it for the mortar!
At a company Workshop we ran about Teams, we got each of our teams down on the floor plotting the strength of their relationships with the other teams. Some were measured in cotton thread, others in string, the strongest in steel chain.
You can be the greatest sales department in the world, but if you don’t have what you are selling in stock, or easily available, your efforts will be in vain.
Successful teams have strong internal bonds and a highly competitive streak. That’s great, but in a business they must also sync with other Teams.
A strong case can be made that were the NHS’s teams made to sync better together, the organisation as a whole would perform better.
As ever, find out more about how Involvement works together by ordering our Book of Involvement, the inside story of our business transformation, for free here.
